


Zero To Hero

by NumberThirteen



Category: Skin & Bones
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, First Meetings, Gen, Government Experimentation, Prison, mention of murder, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:57:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NumberThirteen/pseuds/NumberThirteen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skin & Bones are Bournemouth's law enforcement secret weapons - super-popwered crime fighters. But before they were Skin & Bones, they were Richard Bones (a hitman, not a murderer) and Kaneda 'Skinny' Takahashi (a rapist and murderer). </p><p>How do they get from there to being heroes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero To Hero

I may have killed people but I'm no murderer. 

Before I get carried away with this, I'd better let you know who's who and what's what. My name is Richard Bones, but most people just call me Bones. Yes, the accent does give it away, but I am American. A New Yorker to be exact. I just got caught up in your damn limey prison system. I'd left the USA because things had got too hot for me back there. I'd been working as hired security for a couple of different mafia families and each found out about the other and let's just say neither family was too pleased by that. Fuck, I was just trying to make some extra cash but they took a different view. Something about loyalty... But yeah, I like my body in one piece and not in concrete boots, so I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and all that crap, and came to England.

A lot of people think that London is the place to go if you're a working criminal. Nah. South coast of England is where things actually happen. It took a while for me to realise that. I spent months in London, but all the crime was either white collar bankers fucking things up for the working man or street gangs where the average age is twelve and the average IQ ain't that much higher. But I got a few jobs, mainly security and tidying up after negotiations went bad, and kept my ear to the ground. There was a lot of shit happening down in Bournemouth. It turned out that criminal bosses liked Bournemouth. It was warmer than London, rained less than London, and had good road links to the docks in Southampton and Plymouth for the unloading of certain goods. Banned and illicit goods. The good shit.

So all was good. I moved to Bournemouth and worked around. I had a strong reputation when it came to delivering the goods and stopping potential security liabilities becoming a real fucking problem. The only problem was the police. I hadn't paid much attention to limey cops. How much trouble could they be? They don't even have guns for crissake! What would any limey cop do? Wave their nightstick and shout stop?! I was wrong. So fucking wrong. I swear the fuckers were like that Sherlock Holmes. I was out one morning, trying to find somewhere that sold decent coffee, not that pisswater instant crap, when I got jumped by a squad of cops and arrested. Turns out that they'd been watching my bosses for months and had just been amassing not just enough evidence to do me for GBH, but enough to get me on all the 'problems' I'd disappeared. The fucks had accounted for each and every body I'd chucked offshore. Should've found a pig farm...

So that is how I ended up in a very nice cell for two in a limey prison, with a stunning view of a brick wall and a dead seagull. 

I'd hoped for a cell to myself, but the cutbacks in the Prison Service meant I got a roomie. Great. Just what I wanted. Some prick talking about fucking soccer all the time. But the gods were smiling on me. I got the only less English person in the prison than me. My cellmate was some Jap called Kaneda Takahashi. He called himself Skinny. He was. And short too. I swear he was only about 5'5" or 5'6". There was barely anything of him. I was in a maximum security wing as killing over fifteen people in the UK (I didn't mention the fifty or so I'd dispatched in my line of work back home) was seen by the wardens - sorry, prison officers, begging your British pardon - as being a bit dangerous. I wondered what the Hell this kid had done to be locked up with me. 

I almost wished I hadn't found out. Kaneda 'Skinny' Takahashi was fucking insane. The sort of insane that even the villains in Batman's Arkham Asylum would have thought was a bit too much. The prison shrinks were throwing words like "maladjusted", "sociopath" and "psychopath" around like confetti. Skinny had kidnapped, raped and murdered over seventy men, one woman, thirty cats and a frog. How is it even physically possible to rape a frog? And I was sharing a cell with him! The only explanation I could come up with was that the wardens thought that they could save on the budget if me and Skinny just killed each other. Life imprisonment ain't cheap.

I was quite shocked when that didn't happen.

But not as shocked as I was when I realised that I liked the sick little fuck. Not in the prison porno way, but, it was weird. Skinny managed to make me feel like I was his big brother or something. He'd learnt English from watching American TV, so he was understandable but not fluent in the language. But we talked. Well, more like Skinny went on and on about every little thing that crossed his mind and I had no choice but to listen. Turns out that he was in love with every poor bastard he killed, even the frog, and he was convinced that they loved him too. It doesn't explain why he had to violate and kill them (and in one case violate them again) though. I thought sociopaths and psychopaths weren't meant to have emotions, but Skinny seemed to be the opposite of that - he felt emotions and love and saw love nearly everywhere. I was so glad he wasn't in love with me.

But we became friends of a sort. I helped him with his English, we pooled our cigarette supply and Skinny resolutely didn't fall in love with me. Although I did see him eyeing up one of the trustees in the prison library once. But news like Skinny spreads, and no fucker came near us and we still hadn't killed each other after seven months inside. That was when we got signed over to that government research programme. Some sort of medical experiment to research strength and mental resilience they said. Hardly any risk of injury or mishap they said. Still it got two lifers out of the prison system.

I knew it came down to the fucking budget.

**Author's Note:**

> Skin & Bones is a comic from the Reload Comics publishing house. I make no money from this work of pure fiction, based on pure fiction. I do however make some serious satisfaction from writing this, and hope you enjoy reading it.
> 
> No frogs were harmed in the writing of this fic.
> 
> NB Reload Comics are rebooting Skin & Bones with some plot/character changes. I'm keeping this up as I rather like it :-)


End file.
